Subway Changes More Than Neighborhoods

Writer bases play around coming of Second Avenue Subway By [Dan Rivoli] For straphangers that ride the 4/5/6 train lines, the Second Avenue Subway means relief from overcrowding. For East Siders that live along the river, the subway means more transportation options. For some Second Avenue residents, the subway means leaving their home. But for Brooklyn playwright Chad Beckim, the Second Avenue Subway forces a trio of roommates to reassess their friendship. Beckim"s play, ...a matter of choice, chronicles the relationship of three young New Yorkers living in an East Harlem apartment after learning that they are being kicked out because of the subway. The play finished a five-show run Aug. 21 at the New York International Fringe Festival. The twenty-something roommates's a Black gay man, a white, lifelong New Yorker and a Puerto Rican woman's face eviction from their apartment at 114th Street and Second Avenue because of construction on the Second Avenue Subway. They have three weeks to find a place or the MTA will relocate them to Staten Island. â??[They are] this crazy nuclear family, the New York City nuclear family, where people with no family move together and become each other"s family, said Beckim. â??I knew something bad was going to happen to make them move. He decided on the Second Avenue Subway after seeing a story about its construction in the Daily News. â??The impetus for the play was trying to write a New York story, Beckim said. â??What"s a bigger symbol of progress and gentrification than the New York City subway? Beckim had a front row seat to the gentrification of the New York neighborhoods that became his home. Beckim, who now lives in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, started his career as an actor on the soap opera All My Children, commuting by bus from Maine and sleeping at Port Authority or crashing at his fellow actors" homes. At the advice of an agent, he moved to the city for more work. After his agent died, Beckim, starting from scratch, moved to Washington Heights in 1997. He lived with a Dominican family that charged him $75 a week, meals included. â??I was a child. I had a curfew and I had to get a pager. They were always scared of me getting robbed, he said. He moved to the East River Houses in Harlem, which became the setting for his play. Beckim said he used the first couple of sections from a 2,000-page MTA report about subway construction and studied eminent domain procedure. Beckim co-founded Partial Comfort, a production company, with Molly Pearson, a woman he met through an ad in a trade magazine. In 2005, the company produced ...a matter of choice, which was featured in a New York Times piece. Beckim"s play made it to the Fringe Festival's which features another play by Beckim called Cookie's when a company called Freed Purple Monkey Theatrics bought the rights and produced the show this year. The play is running five years after the first production and the Second Avenue Subway has started actually changing neighborhoods. While people are being displaced from their homes, similar to his three East Harlem characters, some things have changed. â??They do not relocate you to Staten Island, Beckim said, â??contrary to what I wrote in the play.